TQM, BPR, JIT, BSCs and TLAs: managerial waves or drownings?

Suggests that the progress made towards the acquisition of quality through TQM, ISO 9000, BPR, BSCs (balanced score cards) and all the other related TLAs (three letter acronyms) and techniques is in danger of consuming itself through a process in which the goal is displaced by the means: quality by measurement. This form of development, defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, failure constructed from precisely those features that generated success in the first place, has a long and distinguished career whose theoretical origins we can trace at least as far back as Hegel. Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning (Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning)